The
Kawasaki Ki-45 Toryu (屠龍, "Dragon Slayer") was a
two-seat, twin-engine
fighter used by the
Imperial Japanese Army in
World War II. The army gave it the designation "Type 2
Two-Seat Fighter"; the
Allied codename was "Nick".

Development

In response to the rapid emergence in Europe of twin-engine
heavy fighters such as the
Messerschmitt Bf 110, the army ordered development of a
twin-engine, two-seat fighter in 1937, and assigned the proposal
by Kawasaki Shipbuilding the designation of Ki-38. This
only went as far as a mock up, but by December of that year, the
army ordered a working
prototype as the Ki-45, which first flew in January
1939. Results from the test flights, however, did not meet the
army's expectations. The
Ha-20 Otsu engine was underpowered and failure-prone,
while the airframe suffered from nacelle stall.

The Ki-45 did not enter use, but the army, insistent on
having a working twin-engine fighter, ordered Kawasaki to
continue development. Kawasaki responded by replacing the
engines with the proven
Nakajima Ha-25. Flight tests were promising.

In October 1940, the army ordered continued improvements such
as switching to 805 kW (1,080 hp)
Mitsubishi Ha-102 engines. This craft, designated Ki-45
Kai, was complete in September 1941 and was officially
adopted for use by the army in February 1942 as the "Type 2
Two-Seat Fighter".

Operational History

The Ki-45 was initially used as a long-range
bomber escort. The 84th Independent Flight Wing (Dokuritsu
Hikō Chutai) used them in June 1942 in attacks on
Guilin, where they encountered, but were no match for
Curtiss P-40s flown by the
Flying Tigers. In September of the same year, they met P-40s
over
Hanoi with similar results. It became clear that the Ki-45
could not hold its own against single-engine fighters in aerial
combat.

It was subsequently deployed in several theaters in the roles
of interception,
ground, ship attack and fleet defense. Its greatest strength
turned out to be as an anti-bomber
interceptor, as was the case of the Bf 110 in Europe. In
New Guinea, the JAAF used the aircraft in an anti-ship role,
where the Ki-45 was heavily armed with one 37 mm (1.46 in) and
two 20 mm cannons and could carry two 250 kg (550 lb) bombs on
hard points under the wings. 1,675 Ki-45s of all versions were
produced during the war.

The first production type (Ko) was armed with two
12.7 mm (.50 in)
machine gun in the nose, a single 20 mm cannon in the belly,
and a trainable 7.92 mm (.312 in) machine gun in the rear cabin,
and this was followed with the Otsu with the lower 20 mm
cannon replaced by a 37 mm (1.46 in) tank gun, to counter
B-17 Flying Fortress bombers. While the firepower was
devastating, manual reloading meant that only two rounds could
be fired per minute. The next type (Hei) restored the
20 mm cannon, and this time placed an automatic 37 mm (1.46 in)
gun in the nose. A later addition was twin obliquely-firing
20 mm cannon behind the cockpit and removal of the underside
20 mm guns.

Soon after entering service, the Ki-45 was assigned to home
defense, and several were dispatched against the
Doolittle raid, though they did not see action. The craft's
heavy armament proved to be effective against the
B-29 Superfortress raids which started in June
1944. However, its performance was insufficient to counter
B-29s flying at 10,000 m (32,800 ft). Modifications such as
reduction of fuel and ordnance were attempted to raise
performance to little avail, and in the end aircraft were used
effectively in
ramming attacks. An example of a ramming attack was the
kamikaze attack on USS
Dickerson on 2 April 1945 off Okinawa. The commanding
officer and 54 crew were killed when a Toryu clipped the stacks
from astern, and rammed the bridge. A second Toryu hit the
foredeck, opening a 7 m (23 ft) hole in the deck. The ensuing
fires demolished the ship, and after the surviving crew was
rescued by fellow fast transports and ex-destroyers
Bunch and
Herbert, the ship was towed out to sea and scuttled.

Ki-45 Toryu fighters captured at
Kallang Airfield during the
liberation of Singapore

In 1945, the forward and upward-firing guns showed some
results with the commencement of night time bombing raids, but
the lack of radar
was a considerable handicap. By the spring of 1945, the advent
of American carrier-based fighters and
Iwo Jima-based
P-51s escorting B-29s over the skies of Japan brought the
Ki-45's career to an end.

The next version, the Kawasaki Ki-45 KAIc, was
developed specifically as a
night fighter, which were supposed to be equipped with
centimetric radar in the nose; due to production difficulties,
this did not occur. The aircraft took part in night defense of
the Home Islands and equipped four sentais from the
autumn of 1944 to the War's end. They obtained notable
successes, and one Ki-45 sentai claimed 150 victories and
of these claimed eight
USAAF
B-29 Superfortresses in their first combat.

The Ki-45 was to be replaced in the ground-attack role by the
Ki-102, but was never wholly supplanted by the wars' end.

Three Ki-45s fell into communist Chinese hands after
World War II. Unlike most captured Japanese aircraft that
were employed in the
training role, the three Ki-45s were assigned to the 1st
Squadron of the Combat Flying Group in March 1949 and were used
in combat missions. These aircraft were retired in the early
1950s.

Variants

Another Kawasaki Ki-45 of the 53th Hiko Sentai,
active on Home Defence, as depicted by the white
band along the Hinomaru

Ki-45

Prototype aircraft

KI-45 Type 1

Modified operative models

Ki-45 KAI

Prototype aircraft

Ki-45 KAI

Pre-series aircraft

Ki-45 KAIa Toryu

Two-seat fighter Type 2 of Army (Mark A) initial model
of series

Ki-45 KAIb

Mark B version against land or naval objectives;
engines, Mitsubishi Ha-102 of 780 kW (1,050 hp).